Enjoy the Journey

The following excerpt was written by Chris Brady in the book, The Serious Power of Fun, from the Life Essentials Series.

When it comes to equipping oneself for leadership and success, many words come to mind: vision, goals, execution, teamwork, metrics, mentors, knowledge, perseverance, and others. However, one particular word that is critical not only to success but to the very enjoyment of it is often overlooked and usually downright ignored. That word is fun.

The concept of fun doesn’t get much focus. If anything, it is seen as a mere by-product of success, or perhaps one of the facets of success that makes all the hard work of earning it worthwhile. But fun is much more than the result of success; it is actually one of its most effective enablers.

Ultimately, nobody succeeds alone. Success is always with, through, and for other people. And people, though each individually unique, are alike in a lot of important ways. One of the most common threads running through the human experience is the desire to enjoy the journey. Strangely, however, although this desire is universal, the fulfillment of it is alarmingly rare. Although everyone enjoys a good laugh, laughter is seldom heard. Although everyone enjoys the bonding of good times shared, good times are scarcer than we’d like. And although everyone aches for joy, joy is largely missing. Therein lies the opportunity to utilize fun to great ends.

Leaders face all sorts of opposition on their quest for success and significance. Among these is the difficulty of enlisting other people to the cause, especially for the long haul. Financial incentives often fail to motivate, recognition is fleeting, and a sense of accomplishment can be only too distant over the extended course of a project. But the leader that can manage to make it fun along the way stands to accomplish more than he or she could with all the other motivators combined.

Think of the times when you’ve really felt rewarded in your work. If you examine the elements of why those moments were so fulfilling, you’ll likely notice that there was a challenge, the work was interesting, and you made reasonable progress. But usually you’ll find that there was an element of fun involved, too. There was laughter, camaraderie with coworkers, and an empowering sense of achievement. These conditions almost never exist in an environment of drudgery. Usually, all these elements of meaningful contribution are wrapped in an aura of fun. They were fun because they were fun, and the fact that they were fun made them fun!

What?

Fun is a circular concept! When we are engaged in meaningful activity, we discover that our work can become the most fun fun there is! (That is not a typo. I really meant to say the word fun twice!) But we also learn that work can be more meaningful if we strive to intentionally make it fun. In fact, some of the best leaders and highest achievers have discovered this serious power of fun: namely, that fun can make anything more rewarding, more motivating, and more achievable. Fun becomes one of the motivators as well as one of the rewards. Very few success factors work on both sides of the equation in just this way.

Fun, though obvious as an idea, is way more important than you may have ever realized. It is a specific implement in the toolbox of a high achiever, wielded to make things both better along the way and more worth it at the end.